ame of quoits--"enables me to put the fact before you
in a few short, sharp, well-chosen sentences. I won't again attempt to
read the document--"

"You'd better not," Nancy interrupted witheringly, "your delivery is
poor. Besides, I don't want to know what is in that will. If I had, it
stands to reason that I would have found out long before this. I've
had it three days."

"You've had it three days and never once looked into it?" Billy
groaned. "Who started all this scandal about the curiosity of women,
anyway?"

"I don't want to know what's in it," Nancy insisted. "As long as I'm
not in possession of any definite facts, I can ignore it. I've got the
kind of mind that must deal with concrete facts concretely."

Billy grinned. "I'd hate the job of trying to subpoena you," he said,
"but you'd make a corking good witness, on the stand. Of course, you
can proceed for a certain length of time on the theory that what you
don't know can't hurt you, but take it from me, little girl, what you
ought to know and don't know is the thing that's bound to hurt you
most tremendously in the long run. What are you afraid of, anyway,
Nancy?"

"I'm not _afraid_ of anything," Nancy corrected him, with some heat.
"I just plain don't want to be interrupted at this stage of my career.
I consider it an impertinence of Uncle Elijah, to make me his heir. I
never saw him but once, and I had no desire to see him that time. It
was about ten years ago, and I caught a grippe germ from him. He told
me between sneezes that I was too big a girl to wear a mess of hair
streaming down my back like a baby. I stuck out my tongue at him, but
he was too near-sighted to see it. Why couldn't he have left his money
to an eye and ear infirmary? Or the Sailors' Snug Retreat? Or--or--"

"If you really don't want the money," Billy said, "it's your privilege
to endow some institution--"

"You know very well that I can't get rid of money that way," Nancy
cried hotly. "I am at least a responsible person. I don't believe in
these promiscuous, eleemosynary institutions. It would be against
all my principles to contribute money to any such philanthropy. I know
too much about them--but he didn't. He could have disposed of his
money to any one of a dozen of these mid-Victorian charities, but
no--he was just one of those old parties that want to shift their
responsibilities on to young shoulders, and so he chose mine."

"You don't speak very kindly of your dear dead